Last week on September 7, we said goodbye to prof. dr. Jaap Buurke, together with family, friends and (former) colleagues from the field.

After working at RRD for more than 30 years, we ushered the retirement of Jaap Buurke. Jaap started his career on September 19th, 1983 as a conscientious objector within Roessingh, centre for Rehabilitation. After completing his conscientious objector period, Jaap started working as a physiotherapist at the rehabilitation centre on May 1st, 1985. Two years later, Jaap started working in the Research & Innovation Department for 18 hours a week. For a long time, he combined his career as a physiotherapist with work as a researcher at RRD.

In 2005, Jaap obtained his PhD on research into the recovery of walking after a stroke. This research formed an important basis for the introduction of neurorehabilitation principles in the Netherlands and the start of successful courses in gait image analysis that are still provided by RRD and Roessingh, Centre for Rehabilitation. On 1 May 2008, Jaap made the full transition to RRD and became a senior researcher there and had a bridging function with the rehabilitation centre. A year later, he became cluster manager and has been a manager within RRD for many years.

In many (inter)national research projects, Jaap focused on further developing rehabilitation technology and gait analysis. He combined these tasks with a position as professor at the University of Twente (UT) in the field of movement analysis and technology. From this position, he supervised many researchers in their PhD trajectories. In addition to his work at RRD and UT, Jaap's positions included adjunct professor at North Western University in Chicago, medical scientific director of IMDI SPRINT, board member of SMALLL and president of the Dutch association for Neurorehabilitation "Keypoint".

Jaap has marked his retirement from RRD, but he will continue to be involved in various courses in gait image analysis in the coming year.